The Center’s Most Sought-after Workshops

Harm Reduction Therapy

One to four-day workshops include Stages of Change, biopsychosocial assessment, self-determination theory and motivational interviewing, as well as the psychodynamic theories of attachment, transference and countertransference, and emotional communication.

Introduction to Harm Reduction

What It Takes to Practice Harm Reduction Therapy

Co-occurring Disorders

This one-day workshop is a basic primer of neurobiology and covers the interaction between alcohol and drugs, mental and emotional illness, and medications, Khantzian’s self-medication hypothesis, the prominence of trauma in substance misuse, and a unique biopsychosocial assessment model.

Drug, Set, Setting: Understanding Co-occurring Disorders

Alcohol and Drugs 101 & Substance Use Management

This workshop starts with a description of the most commonly used drugs, their effects, benefits, and dangers; helps practitioners talk to their clients about drugs; and offers science-based strategies to increase safety, help people reduce the amount or frequency of use, and otherwise manage their relationship with alcohol and drugs.

Substance Use Management Overview 

Trauma-informed Care

This workshop helps participants understand the relationship between trauma and substance use, learn key trauma-informed practices, and analyze the way that agency policies and staff interactions can be experienced as re-traumatizing. Specific skills are offered for creating an agency culture that is both sensitive to, and able to work with, the complex behaviors that can arise in traumatized individuals.

Conflict Prevention and De-escalation

Harm Reduction offers a unique approach to working with de-escalation. De-escalation starts with knowing our own response to an escalated situation, knowing how other people that you work with respond, and knowing your people that you work with. This training will focus on developing effective techniques for approaching escalated situations before they happen, while they are happening, and how we care for each other after the situation has resolved. Individual, group and team-building prevention strategies are also discussed.

Group Treatment

The principles of harm reduction are ideal for working with substance misuse in groups, whether out-patient, residential, or peer-led. Group members can benefit from each other’s experiences and wisdom, while the group leader must be able to facilitate communication, manage conflict, and create a group culture of inclusion, diversity, and tolerance. This workshop is skills-based, with a demonstration group that helps participants to experience how harm reduction groups work.

Program Design and Development

This training helps program managers align their program policies and procedures with the principles of harm reduction. Issues of access, client culture, managing staff, and policy & procedure manuals are discussed from the perspective of the current agency model. This module is best in small groups and can be conducted in person or via phone or skype.  Ongoing technical assistance for rewriting policies and procedures is available.

Consultation/Supervision

Created to incorporate the principles of harm reduction into staff and therapist development, our model of relational supervision is uniquely suited to helping staff work with complex clients. The different styles of supervision are presented, with supervisors learning to recognize and expand, when necessary, the style they are most comfortable with.

Vicarious Traumatization, Self-care, and Burnout Prevention

Taking care of complex clients is at times a difficult business. The people we work with suffer greatly and the stories we hear are distressing. Agencies and individuals can develop strategies for coping with the feelings that often mirror the distress of our clients. This workshop offers information about the nature of vicarious traumatization, the root causes of burnout, and helps participants and agencies develop their own methods of self-care.

Other Trainings of Interest:

Addiction Medicine and Harm Reduction Psychiatry

Mental Health 101 for clinical & Non-clinical Staff

Substance Use 101 for clinical & Non-clinical Staff

Working with Families and Friends of People with Substance Use Problems